Converting over-the-road trucking to Natural Gas would be astonishingly expensive for the return on investment, a proposed congressional bill includes a $65,000 subsidy per converted truck. Tens of thousands of lane-miles of new highway would be required to accommodate projected freight growth, and that's just the beginning...

Rail freight fuel-efficiency excels. Intermodal freight uses the flexibility trucks offer to haul the shipment from the seller to a rail terminal, then the load is carried the safest and most fuel-efficiently way--on an oil-free electric train, finally off-loaded at another rail terminal a truck makes the final delivery.

Electrically-powered trains are nearly three times more efficient than diesel locomotives, which already win the fuel-efficiency advantage over trucks by four-to-one. Compounding these advantages with other modal efficiencies gives electric railroads a 20-to-1 energy-saving advantage over diesel trucks.[Drake, A., An American Citizen’s Guide to an Oil-Free Economy, unpublished manuscript, 2010, copied with author's permission.]